Save for this one exception, the Pelasgic walls lie now, as they did in the day of Thucydides, below the level of the present hill, and their existence was, until the excavations began, only dimly suspected. Literary tradition said there was a circuit wall, but where this circuit wall ran was matter of conjecture; bygone scholars even placed it _below_ the Acropolis. Now the outline, though far from complete, is clear enough. To the south and south-west of the Parthenon there are, as seen on the plan, substantial remains and what is gone can be easily supplied. On the north side the remains are scanty. The reason is obvious; the line of the Pelasgic fortification on the south lies well within the line of Kimon’s wall; the Pelasgic wall was covered in, but not intentionally broken down. To the north it coincided with Themistocles’ wall, and was therefore, for the most part, pulled down or used as foundation. But none the less is it clear that the centre of gravity of the ancient settlement lay to the north of the plateau. Although the north wall was broken away, it is on this north side that the remains which _may_ belong to a royal palace have come to light. The plan of these remains cannot in detail be made out, but the general analogy of the masonry to that of Tiryns and Mycenae leave no doubt that here we have remains of ‘Mycenaean’ date. North-east of the Erechtheion is a rock-cut stairway (B) leading down through a natural cleft in the rock to the plain below. As at Tiryns and Mycenae, the settlement on the Acropolis had not only its great entrance-gates, but a second smaller approach, accessible only to passengers on foot, and possibly reserved for the rulers only. Incomplete though the remains of this settlement are, the certain fact of its existence, and its close analogy to the palaces of Tiryns and Mycenae are of priceless value. Ancient Athens is now no longer a thing by itself; it falls into line with all the other ancient ‘Mycenaean’ fortified hills, with Thoricus, Acharnae, Aphidna, Eleusis. The citadel of Kekrops is henceforth as the citadel of Agamemnon and as the citadel of Priam. The ‘strong house’ of Erechtheus is not a temple, but what the words plainly mean, the dwelling of a king. Moreover we are dealing not with a city, in the modern sense, of vague dimensions, but with a compact fortified burgh. Thucydides, though certainly convicted of some inexactness as to detail, is in his main contention seen to be strictly true—‘_what is now the citadel was the city_.’ Grasping this firmly in our minds we may return to note his inexactness as to detail. By examining certain portions of the Pelasgic wall more closely, we shall realize how much smaller was the space it enclosed than the Acropolis as known to Thucydides. [Illustration: FIG. 3.]